A funny thing happened at my doctor’s appointment on Friday. I checked in, and after confirming that my address and insurance hadn’t changed since last year, waited for approximately 10 minutes. A worker of some sort, likely a med-tech, called me to “take my vitals.”

She took my blood pressure with a cuff that made my germ-phobic self run for self-regulation, i.e. I stayed quiet and didn’t express my concern about the fact that it looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. I value this doctor among others in my care, and I didn’t want to complain about anything. Then the woman took my weight. And then she asked if she could take my picture, “for the hospital record.”

I couldn’t contain my wondering self. “What is the purpose of the picture?” I asked.

“It’s for the record,” she explained. “For security.”

I thought about it. My picture is pretty much public domain at this point in my life, a decision I made upon deciding not to blog anonymously. Besides, most everyone at the medical center used to know me, including the receptionists, janitors, cafeteria cashiers, nurses’ aides, social workers, deans, full professors, geneticists, fellows in surgery and old-time voluntary physicians, among others who work there. So why didn’t I want this unidentified woman who works in my oncologist’s office to take my picture?

It made me uncomfortable, and here’s the reason: My picture is a reminder that, without it, I might be like any other patient in the system. They (administrators?, nurses, other docs, maybe even my future doctors) will need or want the picture to recall and be certain who Elaine Schattner is.

Don’t get me wrong. I agreed to the photo after all of maybe 20 seconds deliberating. (And my doctor was, I soon learned, duly informed I’d “had an issue” with it. Was that for just asking the reason?) The unidentified med-tech person used an oddly small, ordinary pink camera to complete her task.

When I met with my doctor, she explained that the photo is for security and, essentially, to reduce the likelihood of errors. The hospital has records of so many thousands of patients, many who have similar or identical names. There are good reasons to make sure that your notes on “Sally Smith” are entered into the chart of “Sally Smith” who is your patient.

It’s understandable. I remember when at the nurses’ station there’d be a sign (on “our” side) saying something like “CAREFUL: Anna Gonzalez in 202, Alma Gonzalez in 204b,” or something like that.

Patients blur.

It’s hard, veritably impossible, for most doctors and nurses to keep mental track of all of the patients they’ve ever seen and examined. There’s utility in the new system. Yes, it’s a good idea for a doctor, say upon receiving a call from a woman she hasn’t seen in 3 or 6 or 9 years, to see her picture in the chart, as a reminder.

But I hope my doctors know who I am, and not just what I look like in the image.

2 Comments

Elaine,
Nice post. I haven’t read another post from this perspective. For many of us, our doctors change and often save our lives. As a result, we hold them in high esteem with gratitude and a form of love. It’s natural for us to hope they’ve been enriched by us as well so it’s hard to think that they might not remember us, much less need a picture to jog their memory as to who we are.

[…] Schattner, both a doctor and a patient at Medical Lessons, is hoping physicians will keep things personal, remembering that their patients are fellow human beings, and not just digital images for the […]